[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

[Chris Fields]

Keep in mind modern motorcycle chains are built for a specific purpose. If you have ever missaligned a sprocket, you know you can pop links easily. I think if I built a flail like you have in mind, and I hit the head in the direction the chain does not bend, I could definitly pop links. That style chain is just not designed for that. Also, I would think, due to physics, that a fails power is taking from the fact that momentum can be built up in a circular swing, so you would not want to limit the chains degrees of motion to 2 dimensional.

I can think of 2 other modern advances to a fail if I were to make one. First, use a braided steel cable, instead of a chain. Steel cables have replaced chains in many applications due to being stronger and have more flexiblity, which I think would aid in a flail. I would also hollow out the head and fill it with a loose, highly dense sand, similar to how they make some impact hammers now a days. This allow a harder impact with less force, because the internal sand inertia makes the head "bounce" less on the impact.

Another modern advance could be better grip materials, or even designing a gun into the grip, lol. Actually, now that I think about it... you can make it so that the flail rope can extend on the "away" swing and contract on the "recovery" swing, this could give you more reach and more momentum on the strike, yet when returning, the rope could still be too short for the head to hit your hand.

[Sean Manning]

[Leo Todeschini]

In terms of redesigning an object to make it better; that is always tricky and historical objects more so.

In a dim and distant life I used to be a product designer and was asked to design four objects that would be radically different from anything that had gone before. An ice cream scoop, a corkscrew, a pair of scissors and an garlic press. The project was a killer but with some serious work I think we acheived it, but the comissioning company folded before they ever got to market, which was just as well because they were probably a waste of time regardless of what I thought.

The reason is simple. All these object have been in existence for hundreds of years and have had generations of development by hundreds of thousands of individuals, a great many more intelligent than me and yes I may have hit on some good ideas and I may have had some novel approaches, but in reality the chance of me improving to any great extent a simple object is very very slim. Think of redesigning a spade and coming up with a design that lasts for hundreds of years - not many designs acheive that.

The flail idea is like that. These people knew how to use them and how to make them, they knew what worked and what did not; countless thousands of people used them, developed them and made them and you or I sitting in my living room is not likely to improve much on it.

What we can improve are the simple aspects of materials such as metalurgy and perhaps a bit of finite element analysis in the tang/blade and tang/pommel intersections to eradicate inuse breakage at these points and maybe even provide edge chipping analysis to identify dangerous stress raising points if chips are too deep or dangerously shaped, but I doubt if in real terms in a real battle situation as individuals, with our lack of real context of how these were used, could we significantly improve on what went before.

I don't want to seem defeatist but I have had experience of trying to out do centuries and thousands of my forebears and threw a hell of a lot of money at it to boot and I doubt I acheived very much. You can tweak something, but until that change is evident in a couple of hundred years of examples of that object, I don't think you could hand on heart say it was improved.

Tod

[Darryl Aoki]

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

[Peter Johnsson]

Enhancing or improving on a design can mean many things. It could mean making things in a less costly way.
It has been the case time and time again during the development of the sword that a path has been chosen that arrives at somewhat the same functional quality with less effort or cost.

I do not think that this is the focus of the question, however.
To enhance the structural or functional qualities of a tool/weapon, you need to be familiar with its function and use. We are not as knowledgeable today in these matters as our predecessors were.
We can focus on small details like materials, their treatment, methods of manufacture or construction and make what we think is improvements. It is very probable that important aspects are overlooked in these improved designs, however.
Important design features might not only be how well the tool holds up to use, but also how easily it can be fixed if broken. It may not only be how strong the construction is but also what kind of precision it allows in manipulation.

Today we have a cult of progress and a strong belief in the robust. If it is made from space age materials and can survive incredible abuse, then it is clearly an improvement, right?
Still, such a product may well completely miss those aspects that make the tool functional in the first place and this would come from a lack of understanding of the original object. It is all to easy to get blinded by fancy stuff and impressive statistics.

There is a whole aspect of historical weapons, and specifically swords that is constantly overlooked.
You hear modern practitioners and makers express excitement and worry about strength and structural integrity. A bent blade or nicked edge is always seen as a shortcoming of the quality of the sword, not a shortcoming in skill of use or understanding of swordsmanship.
A sword takes skill and awareness to be used well. It takes more than solid manufacturing methods and high quality materials to make a sword. It is equally important that the design concept if sound. The only way to know that is to look at historical swords. That is where we must learn about what it takes if a length of sharp steel is to be called a sword.
This is a never ending study. There are always new things to be learned.

I do believe that it is possible to make good swords from modern materials and by contemporary techniques. Otherwise I would not be a sword smith in this day and age.
I even think it is possible to work from the design concept of historical sword types, but not include decorative or stylistic themes. The result would be a piece of contemporary work, a contemporary sword for contemporary swordsmen. I do not say it is an improvement of historical designs, but it may in the best case be a sword made according to the premises of the traditional sword, but expressed as an object of contemporary craft.

Not better, but in some aspects new and in a way making a historical tradition live on into our time.

[Sean Manning]

[D. Bell]

Now that we've firmly established that a bike chain wouldn't be suitable for a flail, guess what I spotted while looking through my images.
This was describes as South German, 1520-30.

Just to address something else that was mentioned earlier, flails did exist that used a hinge rather than a chain, although I don't have any images saved, and it may have been more common with agricultural flails than military flails.

[Nicholas Kincurd]

[Bryce Felperin]

Just goes to show you that it is hard to come up with an original idea for an older product. Someone's almost always thought about the same thing and tinkered with it before. ;-)

[Nicholas Kincurd]

Yeah, if it's in any way feasible with materials and resources of the time, it's probably been done.